


Minutes, Mothers, and Mirrors

by froginatinyhat



Category: The Aurora Cycle - Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Genre: (nearly), AURORA BURNING SPOILERS!, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Original Character(s), Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), This isn't explicit, but its a bit messed up, but this one just cries and sleeps and helps confront some issues, cute baby?, dead bird!, don't worry it was bad, just read it I guess?, kind of, laeleth isn't nice, mommy issues?, more like messed up values in parenting, saedii doesn't like kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/froginatinyhat/pseuds/froginatinyhat
Summary: “Five minutes.”When a human being says they will only take five minutes to complete a certain task, they really mean to take much more than five minutes of your own time by making you do something.Like waiting on a ship as they go gather groceries, leaving their infant in your care.(Basically, Saedii finds some peace with her past.)
Relationships: (mentioned) - Relationship, Kaliis Gilwraeth/Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley
Kudos: 13





	Minutes, Mothers, and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that I haven't update Apricity. Have this completely self gratifying one shot instead! (while I stare at an open chapter note, don't worry)
> 
> Kal is dead in this one. Everything else is fine and deliberately vague, of course. But Kal is dead. Do I know if he really is? Not until Aurora Cycle 3 comes out. So NOBODY PANIC. (Yet.)

“Five minutes.”

When a human being says they will only take five minutes to complete a certain task, they really mean to take much more than five minutes of your own time by making you do something. Like helping them with a task, or making you wait for them to do it by themselves so you are left standing around doing nothing for a brief while looking like a useless fool.

Like waiting on a space ship called The Zero as they go gather groceries, leaving their infant in your care.

“I know you do not mean that, Aurora. Why can you not take your spawn with you?” I ask tersely, nodding to the baby she is holding in her arms.

Said child’s limbs lie in those strange angles that an extra level of fat and subtracted level of awareness create, covered by a navy onesie speckled with star shapes. She flings and stretches them out occasionally, as if her first nine months of life have not given her enough experience with their full range of movement yet. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, accompanied by the fluttering of spider-like eyelashes across wide purple eyes. Her head is moving around slightly to take in the no doubt incredibly interesting room around her, occasionally glancing up at Aurora.

I drum my fingers on the armrest of my flight seat, a steady tap of each fingertip on the padded metal in a sequence from my outermost to innermost finger. It catches the child’s attention, causing a coo of curiosity. A pudgy, but somehow detailed hand reaches out slightly towards me.

“I really don't want to. Laekey hates shopping carts with a passion, and babies crying in supermarkets are a horrible experience for everyone involved,” Aurora sighs, gently bouncing her baby on her hip. “Besides, she’s not a problem most of the time. She doesn’t cry unless she needs something, and she’ll be just fine watching you do… whatever it is you do on your uniglass from her carrier. If there is an issue, just call me. It’ll be fine.”

With a stroke through a mop of ebony hair, a kiss to the forehead, and a “Be good for Mommy, okay?”, Aurora places the child in the carrier firmly clipped to the seat next to me.

“Children do not like me. If she does nothing but cry for the next half hour, do not be angry with me.” I say to her back, stilling my fingers with a decisive rap of my knuckles. “Five minutes,” Aurora whispers around the edge of the door before disappearing from view.

As usual, I am correct. The baby begins to cry the minute her footsteps recede.

A slightly confused whimpering turns into betrayed wails, her face crumpling completely. It is amazing how much emotion children can express in such tiny faces, much more than any adult. They know nothing of real suffering, their problems reduced only to feeling peckish or uncomfortable. Yet Laeleth Catherine Jia-Li Gilwraeth O’Malley sobs like she has just discovered the corpses of her entire family spread across the front lawn.

“Hush. She will return,” I murmur, staring at the girl in fascination.

She does look somewhat like me. Though I cut the inky black out of my hair before she was even born with her own shade of darkest brown, her skin is the same colour mine is. Even her facial features are similar to mine when she is not crying.

Everyone insists she looks like me, because it is easier. It hurts them less to compare the child to someone alive, so they do not have to admit that she stole her fathers eyes.

Her father. My brother. Gone.

Gone to rest in the Void with our mother, leaving his Be’shmai with his baby inside of her.

“She will come back for you. That is what good mothers do.”

She continues to sob anyway, her red cheeks shining.

At first, I figure that she will calm soon enough. Then I realize that according to this girl, she is completely alone. That I am just an indifferent stranger, another background character that will do nothing to help her.

So I stand, and walk towards them. I hover in front of her for a moment, then lean down to push the silky strands of hair out of her face. This close, I can see that her ears are pointed ever so slightly, and that the edges of her eyes are darkened with a hint of brown. She even has a spatter of freckles.

I reach over into a bag left behind by Aurora, stuffed with baby supplies. I ignore the milk and bibs, choosing a toy instead- one shaped like a bunny rabbit, soft to the touch with floppy ears.

I raise and shake the toy slightly in front of her, hoping to entice her out of the tantrum. She flings out her fists in indignation as a response. I sense a little flicker of anger towards me, upset that I am not her mother.

“You are right. I am not your mother. I am your aunt,” I say, reaching for the clip holding the baby in place. “The sister of your father, if you insist on specifics.”

Laeleth Catherine screeches at me as I lift her up into my arms.

“Yes. How dare this random stranger presume to try and comfort you,” I chuckle, pulling her closer to my chest. “Perhaps there is an echo of Warbreed in you after all.”

The fuss she is creating certainly indicates a demanding nature. But that may be a common occurrence in children her age anyways.

I try to decide on what to do, and settle for swaying side to side. It may be futile. I do not have what she wants. Yet I do my best anyway, starting to hum under my breath as she cries.

I stay like that for a short while. Rocking side to side, creating gentle waves of movement.

Miraculously, my niece calms in my arms. Realizing I am not a threat, she soon also realizes that crying is exhausting work.

I do not dare to place her back alone in her carrier, not even when she starts to drift into sleep.

It takes me a moment after a minute to realize that I am humming a lullaby. One I did not think I knew anymore. One I thought I had blocked out of my mind.

_“Sleep until birds take wing…”_

Mother. She was one to me, at first.

It filled me with bitterness when Aurora told me what she had named her daughter. Laeleth. Of course, she was likely oblivious to what my mother was truly like. Kaliis never knew her as I did.

They say that mothers hearts are like their wombs. That they will grow, stretch and nurture without either of you having to try. No matter how hard you punch and kick at its walls, a womb will never break.

My mothers heart was not a womb. It was a mirror. I was merely a twisted reflection of myself inside it, and I shattered the glass holding me there into a million pieces, breaking both that form of myself and Mother’s heart apart into fragments.

I still prefer to ignore the bleeding cuts left by the shards. (forgive the sheer, absolute melodrama of those lines. but it absolutely seems like something Saedii would say.)

_Father had smiled when I came back inside, scattered with scratches from tree bark and needles. He had not been angry with me for being dirty for once, merely asking me to go wash and change. If he saw my hands, the blood spattering them, he did not question it._

_I had been climbing the trees of the old forest outside, savouring the feeling of being so high above everything._

_I could not stop thinking of the animal I had found, debating whether I should tell Father about it._

_It had been barely half and hour when Mother came inside to find me tucked up against Fathers side, listening to him tell me of an ancient battle over a long lost artifact. The scene was tranquil, yet for the first time I could see that she was not._

_“Saedii,” Mother had whispered, voice cold. “Did you do this?”_

_She opened her hand, displaying a broken chicks body between her fingers._

_Its beak was grotesquely large, its downy grey feathers matted with wet dirt and remnants of the forest floor. It was almost pitiful then. It had not been when I saw it alive, screeching at an exhausted mother for more food to fill its gaping beak. It was alone in the nest._

_A me’vo. The closest match to it in Terran biology is a cuckoo bird._

_“Saedii. Look at me.”_

_I did._

_“Did you kill this bird?” “_

_What are you talking about, Laeleth?” Father had scoffed. “It probably fell from its nest.”_

_"No. Its neck is snapped completely, and the body is twisted almost in half. The angle is all wrong for a simple fall.”_

_Father turned to me, raising his brow in question._

_He did not appear angry with me as Mother was, and I had no purpose or possibility to lie with her in the room._

_So I told the truth, of course._

_“Yes. I killed it.”_

_“Why would you do that?” Mother had snapped, looking from me to the indignity of the bird. “How could you?”_

_“It was a parasite! The mother bird was sick trying to look after it, and I found the egg fragments and bones of her real children on the forest floor.”_

_“You think ending this life was a mercy?” She asked, looked despairingly between me and the corpse._

_The corpse that had been alive, its wings beating frantically against the cage of my hands. Fat and feathered, yet barely any weight at all. I hated it so much in that moment. Its huge beak and overgrown talons digging into my callused, but still vulnerable palms. It had felt wrong, but I knew that it was right, when I crushed its windpipe between my thumb and finger._

_“No. It was justice.”_

_Father had stood from the sofa, and shot a glare frosted over with warning at Mother. I had stood also, looking between Mothers fear and Fathers will. I wondered which would win, already knowing the answer._

_Mother left. Father gathered me into his arms, carrying me to bed._

_My bedtime story was off how he had ordered a man executed for standing by as his comrades had been tortured, doing nothing to prevent the death of the people he claimed where his innocent friends. How it was good, to not be that man. To not stand by as a parasite drained good souls._

_Mother did not speak to me for days, and barely let me go near Kaliis. I did not talk to her in turn, unable to think of the words to say to her to explain that Kaliis would always be safe with me._

_How naive._

_It was difficult not to care at that age. It was decidedly not difficult to recall my Fathers smile, gently holding my face for a moment. His words, the praise I chased for years after._

_“I am proud of you, my girl.”_

_I was eight years old._

A whimper draws me back to the present.

Looking down, my eyes meet a pair of dark pools, filled with what appears to be concern.

My hands have clawed slightly, pulling at Laeleth-Catherines onesie, and I have gone silent and still in my recollection.

I tuck the girl in tighter with gentler hands, scared to drop her. My movements begin smooth and lyrical once more, an echo of a dance.

“Sleep until birds take wing, rest while the moons sing. Dance around and travel far, once we have bid goodnight to stars.”

My voice breaks, and I hold her too close, and she does not know what I say in my mother tongue, but I continue to sing anyways.

“Sleep until all the clouds do pass, rest while the sand turns to glass. Play in meadows and laugh aloud, once the morning bells do sound.”

“So when we meet again; my sweet, it shall be when the day is new. Know although the sun goes down; my dear, my love for you is true.”

I feel tears budding in my eyes, but see none in hers. They are closed instead, sleep a viable possibility once more.

I do not dare to put her back in the cradle. I do not even dare to stop humming, to stop swaying on my feet.

So I stay there, in a limbo of silent dance and muted song. A calm series of moments, bringing some kind of peace to the storm that has been raging inside of me for so very long.

I can begin to understand why Aurora loves this girl so much. Why she carries so much weight on her shoulders at such a young age, in such a foreign place and time. I suppose a single baby is not much in comparison to the whole universe, but the life of another is no small responsibilty. Yet, Aurora feels as if this baby is equal in value to a galaxy of souls and riches, if not burden.

I am no mother. If the Spirits of the Void have any sense of justice or kindness, I will never be one.

Yet, I can understand why.

“…Saedii?”

Aurora has returned, and I did not even hear her until she spoke.

“If you even consider speaking a word of this,” I whisper, meeting Auroras vaguely concerned eyes. “I will make it look like an accident.”

She chuckles in resignation, setting two bags on the counter.

It is strange, how she trusts.

“Okay. Do you wanna hold her a little longer?”

I pause, pretending to debate my answer.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I made the lullaby up. Does it rhyme in Syldrathi? Probably not. Does it rhyme in Terran? Yup.  
> Please feel free to toss a coin to your local writer. Kudos, and especially comments, are beyond appreciated!  
> Thank you for reading!


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